Country music in the German-speaking area
Country music , which originally came from the United States , and the culture that goes with it, is also received and produced in its various styles in German-speaking countries. There is mostly a very close reference to the corresponding scenes in the USA.
history
Beginnings
Since the beginning of the recordings of country music in the early 1920s, country has also been heard in German-speaking countries. The first shellac records by the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers were released in Germany almost at the same time.
After the Second World War, the American soldier broadcaster AFN popularized the genre in Germany. Big country stars, from Hank Williams in the 1940s to Garth Brooks in the 1990s, have since come to Germany to play for the US troops stationed here, but also for their German fans. A lively country scene also emerged in the German-speaking part of Switzerland at the end of the 1940s.
The 50s
In 1959, the Belgian Bobbejaan sang for the well-known composer Peter Kreuder , got a record deal and released the country comedy song I'm standing at the bar and I have no money . The title hit the charts in 1960 and stayed there for over 30 weeks. With the advent of Hollywood westerns , cowboy music had also gained some popularity. Stars of this time were, for example, Bruce Low with the cowboy hit It hangs a horse halter on the wall from 1957 or the Nilsen Brothers with the German cover version of the Kingston Trio hit Tom Dooley from 1959, which was number 1 in Germany for seven weeks Charts could hold.
The sixties
In 1961 Chuck Steiner founded the Hillbilly magazine , which provided German-speaking country music fans with event information, record reviews and background reports. Country Corner magazine followed in Germany in 1965 . Active personalities included Hauke Strübing and Walter Fuchs . The singer Ronny had several hits. In Austria, Connie "Tex" Hat hosted a radio show with country music.
From the 70s
In the 1970s, musicians such as Gunter Gabriel , Tom Astor , Larry Schuba & Western Union (band) , Winchester 75 and Truck Stop took up country music and processed it according to the zeitgeist. The north German Richard Weize discovered his passion for country music in the 1960s and has since traveled to the USA in search of rare and lost recordings. In 1975 he founded his re-release label Bear Family Records . The label is considered a source for rare and graphically, textually and sonically competent and lovingly prepared recordings. Weize got to know many of the musicians personally, including Johnny Cash . Freddy Quinn had a show on German television called It's Country Time with Freddy Quinn between 1979 and 1986 .
In 1980 the country expert Walter Fuchs, who also knew many musicians personally and had been in the scene for years, published his encyclopedia of country music for the first time . It is still the standard work on the topic and was reissued in 2005 in a revised version. After Fuchs, German-speaking country became “socially acceptable ” in 1978 with the success of the song I would like to hear Dave Dudley from Truck Stop , and the scene grew quickly. He notes, however, that the songs landed in the " hit corner " because of the often banal lyrics and because the Afro-American elements that can be found in country are almost completely missing.
In the 1980s and 1990s, various country and trucker festivals established themselves , for example in Interlaken, Switzerland (since 1993) and in Germany, among other things, the International ADAC Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring (since 1985), with around 6,000 spectators largest festival of its kind in Europe. At the Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, awards for the German-speaking mainstream country scene are awarded with the silver, gold and platinum trucks from the trucker magazine Trucker and Auto Bild .
present
In 1993 the German American Country Music Federation was founded by representatives of the music industry in Germany and the United States in order to better develop the German market. Well-known German country bands are, for example, Silverwood , Cripple Creek Band , Nashville Music Company or Slow Horses ; Bands like The Twang , Texas Lightning and The BossHoss made a name for themselves by recording well-known disco and rock hits in country style. Texas Lightning represented Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 with the country song No No Never and took 15th place.
Alternative country
“Alternative” forms of country play, which developed in the USA in connection with the popularization of rock and with the civil rights movement in the USA since the late 1960s, also found supporters in Germany. In the 1980s, German punks also took up cowpunk . This inspired the Bavarian writer Franz Dobler to take a closer look at country music of alternative reading. In the 1990s he wrote a country column for the daily newspaper Junge Welt and published a biography for Johnny Cash's 70th birthday in 2002.
The enthusiasm for Steve Wynn , Go To Blazes and other American musicians who combined punk feeling with country music prompted Rembert Stiewe and Reinhard Holstein from the Glitterhouse label to concentrate their program on alternative country in the mid-1990s . Glitterhouse developed into one of the most important labels and mail order for the genre in Germany and Europe. The label's annual Orange Blossom Special Festival hosts US and European bands of the genre. As a label, Glitterhouse also represents some US bands, such as B. 16 Horsepower , Woven Hand or Hazeldine , as well as some Northern European bands with country echoes. Edgar Heckmann also founded his label Blue Rose out of passion , which mostly represents American artists for the European market, but also some local artists such as Markus Rill .
The band The Waltons achieved a certain degree of popularity among young people with a wild country mix. Between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s, the musicians of the band FSK approached the subject of country and Germany in their own way, determined by pop culture . In connection with the alternative country of the 1990s, young bands like Fink (who, however, distanced themselves from a country image) and Cow picked up country music and integrated it into the German independent scene of that time.
Web links
- "CountryMusicNews.de" online magazine
- country.de online magazine